Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: Terrors of Irish Fairylore

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Terrors of Irish Fairylore,” an introduction to Ireland’s strange and unsettling folkloric “Good People,” with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University, co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, and co-author of the new book Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-irish-fairy-terrors .]

Today it is common to think of fairies as small, childlike, sparkly creatures with glittering wings and dresses made from flower petals. But the fae of traditional Irish folklore were no such things.

Amoral, capricious, even malicious when they chose to be, the too-frequently forgotten fairies of times long past would, more often than not, haunt nightmares.

Join Brittany Warman, a folklorist who has earned a devoted following among Profs and Pints fans, as she explores the darker side of Irish fairylore.

The figures she'll discuss include: The Leanan-Sidhe, a vampiric fairy who gives artistic inspiration in exchange for your mortal spirit. The Dullahan, a fairy with a human spine for a whip and a habit of hurtling across fields in a death coach made from human skin. The Banshee, a mournful fairy whose cry signals a death in the family to which she's attached herself.

Dr. Warman also will examine the surprising impact of fairy folklore on two classics of Irish Gothic literature, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

It’s a talk that will remind you that the relationship between the Irish and the spooky stretches well beyond Halloween. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: “The Banshee Appears,” an 1862 illustration by Robert Prowse (Wicklow Heritage / Public domain).